November 9, 2017

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Google Assistant now lets you subscribe daily to news briefings, weather, facts, and more

by John_A

Google has welcomed a new feature to its list of capabilities for Google Assistant. To help bring users more information on a daily basis, you can now subscribe to receive a variety of updates.

Released last year, Google Allo is a smart messaging app that’s synced to your Google account. With Allo you can not only send text messages, but you can also get creative by sending doodles, stickers, and emojis.

Allo also includes Google Assistant, which provides you with information such as restaurant suggestions and directions along with the option to participate in one-on-one chats. With Allo’s subscription feature, Assistant sends you daily content such as the weather, fun facts, other information.

Now, users can receive the same updates to their phones using only the Google Assistant app. You can do so by saying — or typing — commands such as “send me a fun fact everyday,” and Assistant will then ask what time you’d like it sent each day. You’ll then be able to tap on a specific time slot and will receive the update each day.

Other than the weather and fun facts, you can subscribe to poems, quotes, funny videos, and mindfulness tips as well. If you’d like, there’s also the option to have the subscriptions sent multiple times each day.

Another way to set up the subscriptions is to ask questions such as “What’s the weather?” followed by, “Send daily.” This will then bring you to specific times to choose from. Assistant will then reply with a message confirming you’ll be sent a weather update each day at your preferred time.

Underneath, you’ll also see an option to “Cancel the subscription” which Assistant will confirm as well. The other option is to “Show active subscriptions,” which gives you a carousel of alerts that are set along with the time they’re scheduled to go off.

You can tap on any of the active subscriptions to either cancel it or edit the time. When an active alert goes off, you’ll receive a notification via the Google app and tapping on it will open Assistant. Your command will then load and provide you with the correct information.

The new feature is now available to use for both Android and iOS. While the subscription options are scarce at the moment, Google will hopefully expand the list in the future.

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